And the best author is.....Alan Alexander Milne!!!

Hi again guys!

Yes, I know. He was not the author who won our selection, but for me he is still the best because of one simple reason: he is the author of Winnie the Pooh!! Today I will speak about him and his story because I found it really interesting y I think he deserves to have a post in my blog.   

First of all we need to know him a little bit, to understand his story. Milne born in 1882 and died in 1956. He was from London, and he was at the same time novelist, playwright and poet but in the War I he joined the British Army and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Because of that he wrote some books about war like for example, A denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934) and War with Honour (1940). These books had not enough success and he tried to do poems, but neither were successful. The writings really made ​​him famous were the stories of Winnie the Pooh.

It all started when he was in the army. The brigade had a real bear as a pet called Winnie. When the war finished Milner decided to take his son to the zoo to visit the bear. The child liked the bear so much that he decided to call his old teddy bear Winnie. Milne began to tell him stories based on his stuffed animals and the bear was the main character in these stories.

These are his child's stuffed animals, which are still preserved:

Another interesting fact was that these Winnie the Pooh stories took place in Ashdown Forest in England, where Milne and his soon usually walked. He wrote these stories but the first one was a poem called Teddy bear written when Milne had not called him Pooh yet. Then the bear appeared in the “London Evening News” in a story called “The wrong sort of bees” and from this moment he began to have success.

When he died, Disney bought the rights of his stories to create Pooh cartoons.  Nowadays it is one of the most known children's series in the world. Because of that the A.A. Milne’s family received 350.000.000 $!!!

For me it is a really amazing story and I learned a lot doing this activity. I never thought that Winnie the Pooh is a real bear!!! 

Here you can enjoy remembering a chapter of these cartoons we saw when we were kids and that exist thanks to this great author!!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uiXSwWaicY

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION:

Hi guys!

In the first post of my blog I wanted to discuss one topic that we saw in class and caught my attention and somehow I found it interesting to develop.
One of the slides prepared by Raquel said that children can bubble any sound, which means that as they grow they eliminate these sounds to get just with the sounds used by their mother tongue. This is quite amazing and I was researching about this topic. 

I have found that this has been one of the issues that caused more controversy throughout the history. There are different theories about this fact:

There were many psychologists who gave an opinion on this. Not everyone had so clear this idea of children born with innate language capabilities and able to bubble any sound. Below you have a list of different psychologists and a short summary of the different theories about this in chronological order:

BEHAVIORAL APPROACH: SKINNER. He did not believe in the innate capacity. He considered the language development depends on the external stimulus. He said that the language are responses that children learn by Operant Conditioning.

NATIVIST APPROACH: CHOMSKY. Chomsky thought that language is generated from innate structures, and his theory is known as “generative grammar” 
Chomsky presented two main ideas: 

    •    Autonomy:  The language development is independent of other functions and other developmental processes. 

          •    Nativism: Chomsky said the language was something innate in all of us because it is something we learn too fast and with too little aids.


COGNITIVE APPROACH: Piaget.
His thoughts were like Chomsky´s but adding a constructivist perspective. He believed that the child needs to experience basic ideas to develop language. He said that the language is equivalent to the intelligence.
                                         

States that language influences entirely on the intelligence of every person because it is the means of acquiring information and transmit information, therefore culture.


SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH: VYGOTSKY
Vygotsky said that language influences entirely on the intelligence of every person because it is the vehicle of acquiring and transmit information and knowledge.

PRAGMATIC APPROACH: Bruner
He said the child acquires language through the magnificent access he has to it, because the language acquisition is socially considered the most important thing. He called ‘external development amplifiers’ to people that allow the child has this great situation of learning, considering the family as the most important.
                                                                                                        

As you can see each of these theories has a different point of view about what is language and how we learn it. 

To finish, I have some questions for you:
What do you think about this? Which of these theories do you think more accurate? Which less? Why?